Only Kami Knows Why
by S. Mark Gunther
Summary: Does success make a man better or worse? A Shampoo/Mousse fic with a surprising twist.


Only Kami Knows Why   
By S. Mark Gunther   
  
It was nighttime at the large sports arena, and a performance had just been finished. The fans, so many of whom had spent their work money, allowances, and bribes had gotten what they paid for. A performance to remember for a lifetime was given by the man now walking to the small dressing room. The room he was to occupy until the bus that was to carry him home for the night. Another night on the road. Another night on the highway of dreams.   
  
"Great show Mousse!" A fan called out from the entourage surrounding him as he walked. His enthusiasm reaching out to the Amazon boy as a hand would reach out to a golden idol. Mousse could feel his admiration and it warmed him to the core...and chilled him to the bone. The fame was fleeting and he still had not found his love. Women surrounded him, sexually harassed him, and treated him as just another rock star...when all he wanted was someone to give him the love he craved. The love he sang about, the urging that had propelled him to the top.   
  
It was lonely at the top, and Mousse occupied a golden prison in which he was the king of a nothing land.   
  
Soon he found himself alone in the plush dressing room, his eyes surrounded by the lovely fruit and cheese table ahead of him...and the large bottles of vodka that awaited him. His drinking, once something to quiet the demons that raged as a part of his work and were now a part of his demonic issues, was something that he preferred to keep private. Normally, he would wait until the silence of the bus to drink...and curse...and cry. But after a show as good as the one he had just conducted, he needed to be soothed by the vile liquid he drank. He poured himself a tumbler full of the clear liquid and grabbed a bunch of grapes.   
  
Sipping, he found himself sitting in front of the lighted vanity that sat on the other side of the plush room. His makeup, a mask to shield him from the outside world, now lay smeared and caked simultaneously on his wide face. A rag was all that was needed to expose the real Mousse to the world, and yet he waited. "I guess it's all the mask I need to wear. No one has yet to see the real me..." he thought as the rag glided across his face, his movements mechanical and automatic as if he was a robot made to perform.   
  
"Excuse me?" A soft voice said as it intruded into the silence of the dressing room. "I'm here to conduct an interview..."   
  
"Yes, Yes...you're here to get some more trite sound bites from the next one hit wonder, I suppose?" Mousse replied as he kept his eyes focused on the smeared face that lay in front of him in the mirror. Another sip of his tumbler loosened his tongue for his next barb, but was cut off by the soft voice wafting across to his ears.   
  
"No...I actually want to get to know the man behind the sound I love..." The door closed behind the back of Mousse and he turned around to see a young girl, her hair done up into a bandanna and her eyes covered with a pair of dark Lou Reed styled sunglasses. Her shirt sparkled and glistened with the sequins and fake jewels that adorned the soft fabric, and the pants she wore were simple, but complementary to the lithe frame he was seeing. In short, she was a typical rock fan/reporter...and a damn attractive one. And yet...there was something non-bimbo-like about this one. Something more...knowing.   
  
"Really? No one has ever wanted to be candid with me about my life...are you sure you want to get into the head of someone you don't even know?" Mousse said softly as a wry smile permeated his lips and a mournful expression glazed over his now unpainted face. "You might not like what you see..."   
  
"I'm sure...and besides, I want to hear why you feel your album is so much better than all the other albums out in the market right now." The young reporter sat down on a sofa and began to take notes on her pad. Her voice came with confidence and power, and yet had a yearning quality that made Mousse shiver inside. It was something he had only felt once before... "You made some bold statements in the press about your music. Why is that?"   
  
"Because it's true. I'm the first artist to begin his career in Japan and have #1 albums both there and in America. I'm the fastest rising Asian artist in the history of the American music scene. I just played to over twenty thousand screaming fans in this; my last night before I go home to Japan, and my latest single is going to be number one here in 2 days. I have reason to think I'm the best..." Mousse paused to sip another swallow from his tumbler, the second swallow much less painful than the first...and much more ugly. "I'm the only artist right now who's really talking about love and pain and not making it all sentimental...I'm being as real as I can..."   
  
"But don't all rock stars say that?" The girl answered, coking her head thoughtfully at Mousse. "You're just following in the tradition of all the best rockers who came before you. What makes you different?"   
  
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing...except my history." Mousse sighed as he walked over to the couch and sat down, fruit and booze still in hand. His eyes, bloodshot and dilated slightly from the stress of the performance shone through the greasy makeup he wore. 'She looks so familiar...at least she sounds familiar...' he thought softly as he took another sip of the clear poison. "Would you like me to start at the end, the middle, the climax, or the beginning?"   
  
"The beginning," the young interviewer said. "I always find my interviews akin to a bad episode of 'Behind The Music'." Her leg shifted slightly and her head nodded as she began to scribble on her pad. She was attractive...intelligent...but slightly hidden from view. Which was exactly what she wanted. The information was coming; she just had to work a little harder for it.   
  
"And am I just another Scott Stapp? A Harry Chapin? Wait a minute...maybe I'm just another Marianne Faithfull, a druggie you can write an expose on..." Mousse replied acidly, his temper rising just slightly.   
  
"No. You're currently the highest charting rocker in America right now. I want to know what fuels you."   
  
"What fuels me. What fuels...this...?" Mousse waved his arms at the sparse, yet plush surroundings he and the young woman were surrounded in. "I'm not fueled by anything more than the fact that I have no family, no home, and nothing to make me feel whole except for the music I play and the anger inside me."   
  
"Then why don't you stop playing around with me and tell me what and who you are? From the beginning..." She said quietly, her eyes shielded by the wide glasses covering her from danger. The sheer audacity of her tone made Mousse smile in spite of his growing annoyance. Mousse returned to his seat and took a sip of the booze he started, all the while feeling more comfortable with his ability to speak.   
  
With a deft movement he slipped his glasses off his eyes and leaned into the cushions. His head gently rested on the back of the sofa, letting his neck recline into a position of comfort ability. He was ready to level with the girl. He had nothing left to hide.   
  
"I was born into a poor village in China about 18 years ago. My mother took care of me as my father left the family very early on in my life. I've only met him once, and now I understand why he left." Mousse said quietly as his voice reverberated across the small space they occupied.   
  
"He was a bad father?"   
  
"No, no...It was the fact that he couldn't deal with the fact that my mother was stronger than he was in society." He paused for a moment to let the idea sink in to the young girl. "I come from a tribe of people run literally by amazons. Women make up the ruling hierarchy. Men are the keepers of the home. But my father was the best fighter of his generation. He was the best fighter in the tribe and yet they wouldn't give him the honor he deserved. He left because even though he loved my mother, and me he couldn't live with the life he was being handed.   
  
"He was addicted to opium by the time I found him. Before he died, right before my eyes no less, he told me to never be led or ruled by anyone. Not my wife, not my family, not my society. He told me to always cut my own path for my own success. It was all up to me, and he didn't want me to follow the same mistakes he had, even though he could see them in me when I saw him."   
  
"And when was this?" The girl softly asked, "When was the last time you saw your father?"   
  
"Five months ago. Just as I was playing the final show of my Asian tour. The final show was played on the night I buried my father. Consequently, I played a show that had people crying in the audience. My mother still doesn't know he died..." Mousse sighed and wiped away a stray tear from his eye, the emotion of the memory bubbling up in the hot springs of his soul. The motion was not lost on the girl, who looked at him with concern running roughshod across her pained visage.   
  
"Anyway," Mousse continued, "I was raised by my mother and the village as a whole. My mother was a beautiful and ambitious woman who thought I had both her strength and my father's potential as a fighter. But she also saw that I needed a male role model in my life. So she taught me the bare basics of her art, but commissioned me to learn from my teacher, Master Cho. He was also known as Soap, and became the father I never had. Under his tutelage, I became the fighter I am today."   
  
"So you fought from a young age?"   
  
"Yes. In my village, only males who were commissioned to guard the village from attack were allowed to learn to fight. And with my handicap," Mousse pointed to his eyes, smiling wryly as he did so, "I was perfect for the role, because it was assumed that I'd never leave. It was assumed early on that I could and would lead a new generation of males to fight for our tribe while the women carried the glory. Some democracy..."   
  
"Was this part of why your father left?" The young girl felt her glasses slipping lover on her nose and she pushed them up to keep her persona hidden from the man she was interviewing. "Did he want to be more than a lackey to your mom?"   
  
"It was more than that. It was the fact that he could never give his love to my mother they way he wanted to." Mousse paused for a moment and sipped another hit of the viperous elixir fueling his venom. "To be married in my society, a male has to defeat a female in battle. Then that female marries the male who proves his strength to the entire village by beating the woman. It's a backwards-assed system, but it was also the tried and true method for my village for two thousand years. Such a pedigree, such a history is not easy to ignore.   
  
"But my father was a lover in the truest sense of the word. He learned his fighting art to better himself, not to hurt anyone. The very thought that he had to hurt my mother, the woman he loved more than life itself, to gain her hand sickened him to the core. It made him not want to even be near her because she was the golden goddess he couldn't have for his own." For a moment the tears he had been holding back threatened to rise up, but he held them back and spoke on. "The irony is that she loved him as well, but she wanted someone to beat her. To dominate her by force, if but only once. And he just couldn't do it. He just couldn't hit the one he loved with his art. I was not acceptable to him."   
  
"But he did it?" She asked gently.   
  
"Yes. I wouldn't be sitting here if he didn't." Mousse smiled sadly and sunk deeper into the couch. His face, normally a blank mask of emotion, was now flushed and colored by the pain and history littering the landscape as he spoke. "But when he saw me being born, he realized that seeing the fruit of his violence against my mother was too much for him. He had to leave, and she didn't understand. Or didn't want to accept it."   
  
"Do you accept what he did? Or do you hold some grudge against him for leaving you?"   
  
Mousse paused for a long moment before speaking. "I don't hate him, and I accepted what he did to me and my family a long time ago. But what bothers me is that I never knew him until he was on his deathbed. The fact that he left because he didn't want to live with the memory of what he had done is something I understand because I did the same thing. Fundamentally, at least."   
  
"Are you going to tell me what you did to make you leave your home land? Or is that a place you don't want to go to in this interview?" The young girl looked upon the storm clouding his face with worry. She didn't want his anger blowing her plans, and yet she needed to know more. She needed to know why he did the things he did.   
  
"After I get another glass of vodka, I'll be happy to tell you why I evolved into a copy of my father." Mousse replied acidly as he rose and walked over to the table. He picked up the bottle nearest to him and poured the liquid sloppily into the glass, spilling much of it onto the table around him and not caring about the neatness factor. His return trip to the leather couch spilled more of the alcohol onto the carpet before him, but again, he could have cared less. "I became a copy of my father because even though he left me, he didn't take his way of looking at the word and the people he loved.   
  
"I fell in love with a girl in my village when I was 5. Yes, 5 years old. I was struck from the first time I saw her that she was the one I needed to be with forever. But she was...different. She was the first woman of my generation with the raw potential to become the elder to lead my people into the new millennium. And I loved her. I stood up for her when others picked on her as a kid. Even if I couldn't see her, I saw and felt the love I had for her. And I grew stronger only because I wanted to show her how much of a man I was.   
  
"But as time passed, the only thing I needed to do to win her hand in marriage was the one thing I just couldn't do. Like my father I couldn't bring myself to hit the woman I loved. So I tried to be her confidant, her annoying little crush that she couldn't ever shake. I see that now that was the worst thing I could have done, because it lead me to do what I did in Japan."   
  
"Like what?" His interviewer asked, her pen never stopping on the small pad she wrote in.   
  
"Boy, you really want to drive me to drink all night, don't you?" Mousse said sadly as he sunk low into the couch, feeling his soul sink right along with him. "As fate would have it, a man came to my village, dressed as a woman who beat the woman I loved. And according to my society's rules, an Amazon woman who is beaten by a female outsider has to hunt the offender down and kill them. But this girl was light years better than she ever could be and they all got into one big mess. It turned out that the boy was cursed to become a girl when splashed with water. Both Shampoo and I went to the spring where he was and we both were cursed also. She became a kitten, and I became a duck."   
  
"A DUCK???!!!" the girl laughed inadvertently, but sobered quickly as she saw Mousse's dark remorseful eyes. "I apologize..."   
  
"Relax. It's funny to me now, but at the time I was mortified by it. But when I left Japan I went back to where I was cursed and cured myself. I've been human now for over 7 years and it's been great." Mousse smiles slightly and chuckled at the memory but quickly went back into the emotional withdrawal he was known for. "I'm able to laugh a little about it now, but by the same token it still hurts to remember it all. Because of this man's defeating my love, he was forced to marry her. And he was going to have no part of it. So she left China to track him down, and I left China to track her down. Which was the worst thing I could have done.   
  
"I came to Japan and nearly beat the kid in the first fight we had. Almost, but by a twist of fate I was defeated in battle. He and I are friends now, but for a long time I hated him because of how he controlled the heart of the woman I loved. And her grandmother, who just happened to be an elder in the tribe I was a part of, came with her to supervise her rise to power. So I began to work for a woman who hated me and attempt to love a woman who would have been happy to see me die." Mousse sighs and looked out to the door, his eyes misting slightly at the memories being stirred. "I made so many mistakes in my trying to get Shampoo to be mine."   
  
"Shampoo? That was her name?"   
  
"Well, the Chinese way to say her name is 'Xian Pu', but when she was first seen in Japan she adopted the Shampoo moniker. My real name is Muu Tsu, but I became Mousse. I have gone back to my Mandarin name because it is who I am now."   
  
"What made you leave her? You apparently loved her with all your heart..." The interviewer asked pointedly. She shifted in the chair with quiet anticipation of the answer that he was going to give to her. "Why didn't you just wait her out?"   
  
Mousse took another sip of the now nearly empty tumbler as he contemplated her question. It was one he himself was still brooding over, and he only had some ideas as to why. "The reason why I left her was because when the boy she chased got married, she interrupted his marriage ceremony and tried her dammedest to make him hers. Between the fact that she did this to someone at the altar and the fact that I was being disrespected badly by her and my elder at the time, it all just boiled over for me." A pause was taken, an octave became clearer in Mousse's tormented voice. "I remember hearing all the things she did and seeing everything become crystal clear in my mind. Nothing was going to change between her and I, and if she was willing to go the lengths she went to get someone for her husband, tradition or not, then she was not the person I needed to love. It hurt like hell, but I made my decision to leave.   
  
"I just stopped trying to buy the lie that with hard work and fighting ability I could make someone love me who didn't want to love me. I just stopped pulling the wool over my eyes and it hurt to see things like that in the harsh light of day." Mousse began to cry silently as his memories transported him mentally to the site of his most horrible decision. His tears began to flow down his cheeks, though his voice stayed clear and full. Lush and tormented the notes in his words came. These tears were not lost on the girl as she struggled to keep writing all she heard without collapsing emotionally with him.   
  
"So what happened then?" the girl asked softly.   
  
"Well, I found a cousin of mine who lived here in the United States who would take me in. I saved enough money for my airfare and I came over here 7 years ago when I was 18. The day I left was the last time I saw Shampoo." Mousse sighed as he remembered the day he left. "It was surreal going on the plane that first time, because I could see this crystal clear sky in front of me and I could see all the darkness behind me. Yet I still wanted to be knee deep in the darkness. It was strange."   
  
"Did you get into music when you got here?"   
  
"No. Not at first. I was so angry and so hurt about losing Shampoo, that the first two years in Los Angeles was damn near a hell for me. I was living with my cousin, who had also left the Amazon's to find his own way, and we got into drinking together to ease the pain. It only took one night of drinking with him to set me off; after that, I lived to drink. I went to work, did my job, came home, and drank myself into submission. I woke back up, did a little of my art to stay a little bit healthy, and then stumbled back to work. It's a wonder I didn't balloon out like a slob with all the drinking I did..." Mousse said softly as a wry, sad smile passed across his face. "I wasn't getting any satisfaction in my work, and I wasn't finding any joy in my new found freedom. All that made me happy was the alcohol.   
  
"For nearly two years I drank and drank. My cousin and I put away enough alcohol to make people blush today. But one night, after drinking an entire case of beer and a fifth of vodka, I got so sick I had to go to the emergency room." For a moment, his voice stopped and his breathing got slightly heavier as he sat his glass down on the floor. "You don't know death until you're on your back with nurses rushing around you, calling out doctors and drugs and weird shit to save you. You don't know the bottom until you reach it, and I reached it. Hard. I couldn't keep on drinking, and I couldn't keep on living. Something had to give...."   
  
"So what happened?" The girl asked, her body hanging on every word like a spectator at the burning of a building. "What made you stop the binging?"   
  
"Well, after I got discharged from the hospital, I went back to work and proceeded with my life. But one day soon after my binge, I had to deliver a package of food to an address on the south side of town. When I got there, these kids were playing their instruments and rehearsing their material. The song I heard when I walked into the door floored me. By that time I had learned enough English to speak rather fluently, and I got into the vibe of the words almost from the start, even though I had no clue about the music they were playing. I struck up a conversation with the guy who I gave the food to, and one thing went into another. Soon, I was sitting in with the band."   
  
"From them I got my first taste of American rock and roll, and it hit me like a sucker punch. With that band and that group of people, I was able to finally put my feelings to Shampoo into words. I was never going to be able to tell her exactly how I felt about everything that had happened but as I wrote I realized I could at least validate my feelings by writing them. And that was good enough for me. It still is." The Amazon male rubbed at his eyes involuntarily, cleaning the dried tears from his upper cheeks and eyelids as he spoke about his rebirth. "Everyday I wrote, I got stronger, emotionally and mentally. Alcohol didn't hold me like it had when I wrote down my misery and disdain. It soon came to the point that I had to learn guitar because the band instilled in me a desire to bring my story to the masses as best I could. Hence why I'm the superstar you see now."   
  
"And you still keep in touch with the band you started with?"   
  
"Absolutely. In fact, tomorrow night I will be playing with them at the 5-year anniversary gig of meeting me. They have switched names again, and I think the name 'Orphanage' finally encompasses their auras. They were musical refugees like I was, and we found a way to become more through our music. I'm like a surrogate member of the orphanage and it makes me feel good." Mousse smiled, sighed, and looked over at his watch, frowning at the time. "I have to leave soon. My bus should be here any minute..."   
  
"I only one more question for you, Mousse," the girl said softly as she laid her pen and pad down. Her bandana began to slide off her hair and she did not attempt to stop it from descending. Large raindrop tears fell from her cheeks, and he breathing and words were jagged like the knife that cut through her emotions in hearing Mousse's story. "If Shampoo was here right now, what would you like to tell her?"   
  
A long pause followed, as the boy tried to oversimplify the emotions that ran around in his heart. "...That I still love her. All the time I have been here and all the time I've been with groupies and girlfriends and whatnot, has never made me stop loving her. She was the first person to make my heart and break it, all in the same motion. I can never stop being angry with her for making things so difficult in my life, but maybe I can thank her for allowing me the drive to find a way to cope with it. I love her. And little else can truly change that." Mousse smiled as he stood up to leave the room. "I think you have everything you need. Now I have a bus to catch. Thank you for this therapy session."   
  
"Wait." As Mousse heard these words, the girl's gentle arm pushes him back onto the couch. His eyes traveled up her lithe young body as she began to remove her emotional and physical armor. First came the already loosened bandanna, which let her hair flow down her face like rain on a mountainside. Dark, rich, and undeniably purple hair. Hair weathered and teased by the time apart, but the hair of no other. Then the glasses that had so hidden the girl's identity were removed and Mousse found himself staring into the face of the one person he never thought he would see again. He looked at the person that was the fuel for his fire, the battery for his toy soldier war, and the inferno for which his artistic pyre raged on. Mousse looked into Shampoo's much older eyes and saw a look of sadness and yearning that he could only softly gape at.   
  
"It's me Mousse," Shampoo said softly in Chinese as she walked over to the boy she had once scorned. "I've come back....because I need to say I'm sorry to you. I could have loved you a long time ago, but my pride held me back. My longing to be the right Amazon held me back from loving you like you deserved. And now you've become stronger than ever." With that she flung herself into his bewildered arms and let him feel the softness he had only dreamed of for 7 years. His senses were in revolt as the old picture of Shampoo came back into his mind. She couldn't be back...but she was. And she was apologizing to him for the mistakes of the past. Something had to be different. It didn't add up.   
  
"They why didn't you find me sooner? Why did you wait so long?" Mousse murmured as he held Shampoo close to him for the first time. "I've missed you so badly.... why did you make me wait?"   
  
"Because I needed to find out whom I loved, and what I needed in my life. I do not need the Amazons anymore, because they do not accept you. Nevertheless, you always accepted me. You gave me love when no else would. And I'll be dammed if I lose that again. It took a long time, but I am glad I waited. You're the man I always thought you would be now...can you forgive me?" Shampoo began to cry softly on the broad shoulder of her former friend as the emotions she had been bottling for years fell onto his soft cloth like water spray from a raging river. It was all she could do not to choke him to death with her embrace, and Mousse knew it. The past was past. Maybe they could figure out a new future together.   
  
"Then come with me. We have much to talk about." With that, Mousse cradled the still weeping Shampoo into his arms and carried her to the doorway. A bus awaited them, and with that, bus came the promise of a new tomorrow. The pair might not find love, but if nothing, else they would finally find out the truth. The miles of the road would see to that. The Amazon boy kissed his found treasure on the cheek as he left the room, and proceeded into a new chapter in his life. 


End file.
